War: see Just War.

Weil, Simone Simone Weil (1909–43), born into a freethinking Jewish family in Paris, was one of the first women graduates of the École Normale Supérieure. Throughout her life she was attentive to society's marginalized. Her writing addressed a variety of topics, including Greek philosophy, K. Marx (1818–83), Christianity, the Bhagavad Gita, literature, science, mathematics, politics, and ethics. Like Marx, she sought to reconnect theory and praxis by developing a philosophy of work. This commitment shows in her activities: teaching, working for a year in a factory, supporting French labour organizations and the unemployed, attempting to fight in the Spanish Civil War and working with the French Resistance in London, where she died in 1943.

Locating herself on the border of all things Christian and non-Christian, Weil simultaneously criticized and embraced the religion. Her critique was levelled at institutionalized Christianity, the church, and its collusion with any form of empire (whether fourth-century Rome or twentieth-century France), that produced a theology that excluded any others – whether religions, beliefs, cultures, or ideas. Weil embraced a unique version of Christianity, emphasizing inclusion, contemplation, renunciation, and truth. She saw Christ as revelatory, but not unique: incarnation occurs before and after Jesus, from the beginning of creation when ‘the Word was with God’ (John 1:1). The import of Christ is his decreative, or renunciatory, stance. He gives up his life in order to (1) attend to the least among us, (2) criticize institutional power, and (3) reveal the supernatural use of suffering.